AuthorTopic: The Poetry Thread (Read 9202 times)

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,Stealing my breath of life, I will confessI love this cultured hell that tests my youth!Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,Giving me strength erect against her hate.Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,I stand within her walls with not a shredOf terror, malice, not a word of jeer.Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,And see her might and granite wonders there,Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

I don't know what my favorite overall poem would be--certainly "We wear the Mask," "Dream deferred," "And Still I Rise" would all be in the top ten

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,Stealing my breath of life, I will confessI love this cultured hell that tests my youth!Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,Giving me strength erect against her hate.Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,I stand within her walls with not a shredOf terror, malice, not a word of jeer.Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,And see her might and granite wonders there,Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

I don't know what my favorite overall poem would be--certainly "We wear the Mask," "Dream deferred," "And Still I Rise" would all be in the top ten

Yes, all good choices. If I had to rank the ones you listed I'd probably go: (1) And Still I Rise, (2) America, (3) We Wear the Mask, BIG GAP (4) Dream Deferred - although I like the first three so much it's not like the gap is between good to bad, it's more like super-favorite to very good.

By the way of all spheres,on steep rocks overgrown with segments of color,covered with chalk that children have broken,we watch fragmentsthat keep rising,compressed as if under the weight of water,their slow takeoff: a signpost,white curtains raised.

There is no hardship in breathingprecisely here, in this circle,no hardship in breathing,and also onward, ahead, it seemsas if balance is built in, unbreakable;each time widening caves,widening and narrowing,like the activity of an unknown (unimaginable)respiratory system, magnified under a microscope.

Invalid are nostalgia, night, melancholy,laughter falling as snow,everything parallel, everything there that can bereached from here, all “the way” in between.

We are watching the reactions to this condition,slowly, step by step, the outer leaves of the artichokefloat away.We can imprint optional memories of notions.

There was a circle.There was one just because we could notuse it.

Whatever the notion, they are all concentricallydisposed, far and near.A freckle that was once an elevatoris a priori a ray, secured by intangibility.Initiation is incredibly slow work,similar to the turning of summer, winter, and stars.

Is this about how we have eaten?Did we make a meal each time?

Enough so that in the process a tiny crack is leftand everything regenerates incredibly fast, and therefore now is.

You who keep a diary of growth and victims,look!Maybe many of them can read it,light falls around,only here of course nothing falls, it gets out.The center, the source of energy watched by usduring this procedure, is empty. The cosmos makes the locus vanish,eats it up. Energy, not consciousness, jumps across, (is)in the negative. Therefore everything is in something,what roughly, because of a notion, can be describedas a grain of sand, all space the remainder,like dust after sawing wood.

On one cubic micron there are endlessgalaxies, and each this enormousspace, nights, moons, suns, with constellationsthat confound us, compressing our membrane.The intergalactic and, of course, these‘injected’ communications, too, are only oppression.

Along this window, in this windowthere are innumerable other civilizations,innumerable other cosmological systems.Thus suffering does not matter,layers do.This is what I show here.

Yo...on The Amen, Corner I stood lookin at my former hoodFelt the spirit in the wind, knew my friend was gone for goodThrew dirt on the casket, the hurt, I couldn't mask itMixin down emotions, struggle I hadn't masteredI coreograph seven steps to heavenAnd hell, waiting to exhale and make the bread leavenedVeteran of a cold war It's Chica-I-go forWhat I know or, what's knownSo some days I take the bus home, just to touch homeFrom the crib I spend months goneSat by the window with a clutched dome listenin to shorties cuss longYoung girls with weak minds, but they butt strongTried to call, or at least beep the Lord, but didn't have a touch-toneIt's a dog-eat-dog world, you gotta mush onSome of this land I must ownOutta the city, they want us goneTearin down the 'jects creatin plush homesMy circumstance is between Cabrini and Love JonesSurrounded by hate, yet I love homeAsk my God how he thought travellin the world soundFound it hard to imagine he hadn't been past downtownIt's deep, I heard the city breathe in its sleepa reality I touch, but for me it's hard to keepDeep, I heard my man breathe in his sleepa reality I touch, but for me it's hard to keep

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The Tragicomic: It’s embodied in the blues, jazz, (HIP HOP, CORNELL <<one slight deserves another!!!!<< REALLY MISSED THE BOAT ON THAT ONE!!!) and the African experience in the New World -- the ability to withstand terrorism, embrace one’s worst enemies lovingly and bear the unbearable in song.

Beans, beans the musical fruitThe more you eat, the more you toot!Beans, beans they are good for your heart.The more you eat, the more you fart.The more you fart, the more you eat,The more you sit on the toilet seat!

[move] [/move]

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Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day. - Thomas Jefferson.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,Till on the haunting flares we turned our backsAnd towards our distant rest began to trudge.Men marched asleep. Many had lost their bootsBut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;But someone still was yelling out and stumblingAnd floundering like a man in fire or lime.--Dim, through the misty panes and thick green lightAs under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could paceBehind the wagon that we flung him in,And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cudOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--My friend, you would not tell with such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate glory,The old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.

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I'm taking my freedom... Pulling it off the shelf... Putting it on my chain... Wearing it 'round my neck... I'm taking my freedom... Putting it in my car... Wherever I choose to go... It will take me far